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A blog about my Human Experience

C’est Bon C’est Belge

Five days. Five cities. Two Breweries. Forty-four beers.

Antwerp, Ghent, Brugge, Mechelen, Brussels

That is the best way to describe my beer infused holiday with one of my best friends, Rob. To tell you the truth, he is the man who taught me to drink beer back when we met up in Salamanca, Spain some 6 years ago. Since then I had promised that when I returned to Europe, I would visit him. So here I find myself, getting off a Wizz air flight in Charlotte Brussels Airport, with my long-lost Flemish brother awaiting me. It only took 10 minutes before we were finishing each others sentences just like a proper bro-mance! Haha! And from there the adventure began! His GPS sent us the long way around through the country side and we suddenly found ourselves staring at the Waterloo monument! What a start to an adventure! My inner history geek was going mad! The location of Napoleon’s final defeat and I was driving by it like it was a cornfield oddity (to many years in Ohio… sorry for the corn reference).

We started our adventure with a home cooked Belgian beef stew in beer (of course) and I had my first taste of Belgian fries… I will say I shed a tear of joy with that meal. I will forever have dreams of Belgian fries. Am I of secret Belgian origin? Is this why I love these deep-fried potato sticks so? Well never mind that! The next day we toured Antwerp on bicycle from pub to cathedral to pub to train station to pub and back again. Yes we ate more Belgian fries. We ate a lotof Belgian fries. I will never regret that. Health be damned. Rob insisted his people had a lovely salad eating culture but in my experience, I struggle to believe him.

We toured Ghent and Brugge the following day learning of the birth of the fruit beers and sour beers at the Brewery De Halve Maan, the last one in operation inside city limits of Brugge. Turns out the yeast native to Ghent made naturally sour beers, so the people of Ghent got wise to adding fruit into the beer making process. Interestingly enough, what would become modern day Belgium was populated by a series of city states with very little in the way of clean drinking water, so they developed a safe way of hydrating, Beer! If you have a chance take the English tour at Henri Maes, you will have a lovely young woman from Alaska teach you more about beer and ale making that you would ever think was possible.

Our beer hunt then took us to the Brewery Het Anker in Mechelen. This brewery has an amazing history. It was once operated by nuns (I love when the church makes alcohol). It claims to brew a style of beer that Charlomagne would drink. And my favorite, it has a moonfighter themed beer dedicated to a group of early 20th century firefighters who thought the cathedral was on fire, when in truth, it was just bathed in a strong moonlight (maneblusser it is called).

On our last day we ran around Brussels walking down cobbled stone streets listening to every accent from around the world. It was very clear this was the capital of Europe. We would of course go see the pissing boy and peeing girl, both not particularly impressive statues, but when in Brussels… go have a looksy. The Cathedral of St. Michaels there however dwarfed all that I have previously seen. Forgive my transgression dear Madrid and Paris. On a serious beer note, if you go looking for the peeing girl, it has a wonderful multi-story bar across from the statue with 100s of beers inside! Rob and I had a mandatory stop.

Beer list with High Recommendation (name, brewery, style and ABV percentage made with Untappd):